Guest Post by Nico Rosso and #giveaway!

Today we have new author, and husband to the lovely Zoe Archer, Nico Rosso! He’s talking a bit about science fiction and writing science fiction. His new book sounds very interesting so be sure to check it out!

Guest Post

By Nico Rosso

Nothing gets the blood pumping like a laser battle. And romance needs a racing pulse. If I said gun battle, it would be different. More scary. Bullets are too real. But Sci-fi has this ability to take dangerous situations and inject them with a sense of fun.

Even if the characters are having a hard time of it, dodging evil aliens or in a flying battle over the streets of Los Angeles, the reader can enjoy the thrills created by a new world. There’s different technology and societies to discover, parallels to our world and far-fetched concepts. These thrills make the romance that much more heated. We see how much the characters have to overcome in order to be with each other.

When I started writing TAKEN TO THE LIMIT I knew I wanted to set the stage for a very large conflict. That way, the hero could be extra heroic and the heroine would really prove her strength against such incredible odds. It’s romance on a grand scale. In this story, the fate of Earth hangs in the balance. In later stories, the Limit War will threaten far-off worlds or entire solar systems. In order to make a war like that plausible, a lot of invention is necessary.

Alien races, weapons and ships. If I can have fun creating these things, then hopefully that will translate to the reader’s experience in the world. So while my main characters, Sergeant Morrow and Dr. Korina Antonakis, fight for their lives, the reader can enjoy the fantastical circumstances around them.

That’s not to say there is unlimited space for creativity. It is Science Fiction. There must be a sense of reality. Even if the technology is beyond what we have on Earth, it has to follow an internal logic. If it’s real to the characters, then it will be real to the reader. Instead of just wrapping magic in metal and calling it alien technology, the challenge is to create objects and scenarios that dance in step with the laws of physics (but allowing a little wiggle room to satisfy the Fiction).

I think of Sci-fi as if it’s historical fiction. But instead of being about humans from a particular era, it’s showing cultures and worlds that either haven’t happened yet or haven’t been discovered yet. Rather than researching history (something my wife, romance author Zoë Archer, knows a lot about), my task is making it seem as if the invented technologies and peoples do exist and I’ve investigated enough to represent them properly.

When a reader enters the story, I hope it feels as if I studied as much as I could about the secretive and elite Nightfighters rather than just making them up. Then the facts about them and Sergeant Morrow can come out in a natural way that feeds the story, instead of distracting from it. It’s reverse engineering. With real history, the challenge is taking facts of the past and using them to feed the story. For Sci-fi, I invent elements to make the story grand, heroic and romantic, then do the work to make them seem real.

But not too real. It’s still fantasy. So when the lasers start flying, we can enjoy the adventure. And once the pulse is racing from the action, then romance is sure to follow.

QUESTION: How much detail in Sci-fi do you like in your Sci-fi? Family trees and glossaries or learning on the fly as if you were dropped into the world?

You can find Nico Rosso on his website where you can also find purchasing information.

GIVEAWAY!

Nico is giving away a PDF of his book to one random reader.

Please answer his question in the comments and leave contact information as well.

There’s a delicate balance. Sci-fi with too little detail might as well take place in Earth. Too much detail and I end up making lists to keep the characters, equipment and location straight.

Ideally, the author knows a ton of info (language, family trees, how the characters manage to get out of their crazy outfits when they need to pee) that doesn’t all make it onto the page. The pieces that do become part of the story should give me the sense that the world is very much complete while not drowning me in miscellaneous info.

The book sounds great, and I look forward to reading it. Also, though I’m sure you know this, you have a lovely and talented wife.

I like a certain degree of detail. I say that too much detail is achieved when the author will talk about the scene and the green of the leaves and the number of plants and trees for more than a paragraph. Once I read a book where that went on for five full pages. Sometimes it’s no wonder that fantasy or sci-fi books are 1000+ pages. It is all that over detail involved.

Hi Nico Thank you for sharing here today. Your book is intriguing.For SF (or Fantasy even) I prefer to just be dropped into the world. C.J. Cherryh & C.S. Friedman do this the best that I’ve read (for both SF & Fantasy).All the best,RKCharron

Hate info dumps and having last technical detail eplained to me. If you have a transporter I don’t need to know how it works just that it does lol. This book sounda fanastic and I’d love to win it. I’m always looking for a good scifi romance. I am assuming this is a romance from the blurb.scrtsbpal at yahoo dot com

I don’t really like having tons of information obviously given to me. I do like having a map at the start of the book though, it’s not useful until you get to know the places, but I like to refer back to it. A glossary isn’t needed unless the words are especially obscure or are mentioned many times without being explained by anyone. Mostly I like to discover the world and it’s details as the character travels through them.

I like my sci-fi the same as any other genre, with the details of setting and world-building interwoven with the action. This is a perfect time to show rather than tell. Don’t tell me how big the spaceship is, let me intuit that for myself as the character bemoans how hard it will be for them to find the bad guy among all the levels and wings of the vessels.

On the other hand, the unique language of the world needs to be introduced slowly so that there aren’t 6 unrecognizable words in each sentence.